Article by: James Oliver

On May 22 Volodymyr Katriuk, a Ukrainian World War II veteran and a suspected participant in the massacre of the 186 inhabitants of the Belarusian village of Khatyn [1] passed away in Canada. For years his name had been at the center of a diplomatic row between Russia and Canada over Russian plans to extradite him to Moscow in order to stand trial for his role in the massacre. In 1999 a Canadian court had cleared Katriuk of war crimes, finding him guilty only of falsifying his name in 1951 to obtain Canadian citizenship. Later in 2008 NKVD documents surfaced further indicting Katriuk of having been complicit in the massacre. At the time of his death he remained no.2 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center‘s “List of Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals.”

It sometimes happens that Westerners know little about Ukrainians and Lithuanians except their reputation as anti-Semites and willing collaborators in the Holocaust Continue reading →

Loosely translated and abridged by George Skoryk from “HISTORY OF UKRAINE”

by Mykhaylo Hrushevs’kyi

II. PERIOD OF STATEHOOD (879-1360).

Prince Olekh established the Kyivan State proper in 879. He conducted military expeditions to the shores of Caspian Sea and raided Byzantine cities. Prince Ehor followed him, in 912, who not only continued external raids but also had to fight insubordinate tribes of Ulitchs and Derevlans. He died during a battle with Derevlans in 945. His wife Olha revenged his death by brutal suppression of Derevlans. In 964 she became a Christian and established her son Svyatoslav Continue reading →

Ukraine has a long Christian tradition, dating from the 10th century. Today there are more than 22,000 religious communities in Ukraine from approximately 80 different Christian denominations, as well as other religions. But the atheist policy of the Soviets has left its mark: many Ukrainians today are unchurched because of the great spiritual void which the Bolshevik regime left in Eastern Europe.

The Conversion of Ukraine and Tensions Between East and West

In 988 Prince Volodymyr the Great established Christianity in its Byzantine-Slavic rite as the national religion of his country, Kyivan-Rus. This happened before the Great Church Schism of 1054 divided Christian East from West. The Kyivan Church inherited the traditions of the Byzantine East and was part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Yet this Church also remained in full communion with the Latin West and its patriarch, the Pope of Rome. Continue reading →

The arrival in Toronto of twenty-three-year-old Panteleymon (Peter) Ostapowich with his two friends, Wasyi Neterpka and Joseph Strachalsky, on April 15, 1903, marked the beginning of the Ukrainian settlement here. Born in East Galicia (West Ukraine), they first immigrated to the eastern United States and then from the coal mines of Pennsylvania came on to Toronto in search of work, as many other Ukrainians were later to do. Walking along the commercial streets of Spadina and Queen and wondering what to do next, they were overheard by a Galician Jew who was distributing bread from his horse-drawn carriage. The good man brought them to his bakery on York Street and after feeding them and giving each a loaf of bread took them to his friend’s house at 49 Continue reading →

The voyage of the SS Arcadia was described by DmytroRomanchych and is taken from Early Ukrainian Settlements in Canada 1895-1900 by Vladimir J. Kaye, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964) :

After a short wait in Hamburg, one and a half thousand Ukrainian emigrants were loaded into an very old but not very large ship, the Arcadia. It was a boat that had steam engines as well as sails which were hoisted when a favourable wind was blowing. Under the top deck there were about a dozen passenger cabins where the “city-coated gentlemen” travelled. Under the second deck were the galleys and the dining room. Below water level, under the third and fourth decks, there were no cabins, Continue reading →